Hanford's A-bomb builders focus on the lives they saved

Few knew what they were working on -- until the 'Fat Man' leveled Nagasaki

By ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, August 7, 2005

Photo: Jackie Johnston/Special To The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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A look at Nagasaki, Japan, after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city Aug. 9, 1945.

A look at Nagasaki, Japan, after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city Aug. 9, 1945.

Photo: Jackie Johnston/Special To The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Larry Denton holds up a photo of himself and fellow Hanford workers taken sometime around 1945.

Larry Denton holds up a photo of himself and fellow Hanford workers taken sometime around 1945.

Photo: Jackie Johnston/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Dee McCullough looks through a scrapbook of photos from recent visits to Hanford, where he worked in World War II.

Dee McCullough looks through a scrapbook of photos from recent visits to Hanford, where he worked in World War II.

Photo: Jackie Johnston/Special To The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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"Fat Man" bomb

"Fat Man" bomb

Photo: AP

Hanford's A-bomb builders focus on the lives they saved

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RICHLAND -- No one at Hanford Engineer Works knew they were making history.

There were signs, but all told them to keep quiet. They were told they were serving their country and furthering the war effort.

But they were curious.

Why were they -- thousands of men and women -- converting an isolated Central Washington farming community into a bustling industrial complex, virtually overnight? Where were trucks and railcars filled with tons of precious steel and aluminum going? Why did they have to wear radiation meters? What was so top secret?

The answer came on Aug. 6, 1945. With the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, the people of Hanford and Richland finally discovered what they had been working on for two years: the Manhattan Project's atomic bombs.

Later, those workers would find out it was their "Fat Man" bomb that devastated Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. Both bombs led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people through the initial blasts and subsequent radiation.

On Aug. 14, 1945, headlines in a Richland newspaper blared: "PEACE! OUR BOMB CLINCHED IT!" in announcing the Japanese surrender.

Employees of the Hanford Engineer Works believed -- and still believe -- the end of the war justified the means. As part of the massive work force that made up the world's first plutonium producing plant, they carried the firm conviction that hundreds of thousands more would have perished had the bombs not been detonated. They also faced the stigma of being labeled as warmongers, or worse.

"It scared us to think of what we had made," said Larry Denton, 80 of Kennewick, about four hours east of Seattle. "Everyone was dubious as to whether it should have been done. But when you piece together all the American lives that would have been lost if we hadn't dropped the second bomb, I feel like it was worth it."

Denton was 18 when he followed his father -- a World War I Marine -- to Hanford to work on the project in September 1943. The younger Denton was 4F and denied military service. His older brother was stationed in England with the Air Corps; buddies from high school were also fighting abroad. The Idaho lumberjack started as a shipping clerk at Hanford, sharing a tent with three other men. He retired in 1987 as a manager of maintenance surveillance of all the reactors.

"I was destined to find something else where I could be used," Denton said.

Denton and his co-workers lived in a world in which the war was the No.1 priority. Rationing limited food and gas, newsreels played in-between feature films and it seemed like everyone had a loved one fighting Axis troops halfway across the globe or knew a boy who hadn't come home. By August 1945, more than 400,000 U.S. soldiers had been killed.

Patriotism was so strong that all 51,000 workers at Hanford donated a day's wages -- $300,000 -- to purchase the aptly named "Day's Pay" B-17 Seattle-built bomber for the war effort.

While the country celebrated the end of the war in Europe with V-E Day on May 8, 1945, reminders of the combat raging in the Pacific were everywhere.

Pearl Harbor had become lodged in the American psyche. Returning soldiers brought home stories of Japanese kamikaze pilots, hand-to-hand combat in the Pacific islands and the Bataan Death March. Hard-fought victories at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima came at the cost of thousands of American lives, while stories circulated about how Japanese soldiers and civilians chose suicide rather than surrender. The idea that U.S. forces might have to invade Japan gained momentum. Under these conditions, Hanford support for President Truman's decision was nearly unanimous.

"They regret that Pearl Harbor was attacked. They regret that Hitler and Tojo and Mussolini came to power and ruined their youthful times by pulling them into war, absences from home, terror and exhaustion. They regret that they had to learn to kill, and to be thrust into terrible situations in combat and in manufacturing armaments," said Michele Gerber, a Richland-based historian and president of the B Reactor Museum Association, which is trying to preserve the world's first nuclear reactor in Hanford. "But the bombings they do not regret. They believe that the bombings ended all of this horror."

The U.S. government contracted DuPont to oversee the Hanford project, so employees came from all over the country, many of them employed by DuPont or its subsidiaries.

Hanford appealed to them because of the steady work (many still felt the sting of the Depression), plentiful subsidized meals, cheap housing and the chance to contribute to the war effort. The average age of the mostly male work force was 40 and those with families found the living camp at Hanford and the burgeoning town of Richland provided for all their needs: schools, all kinds of stores, post offices, fire stations, dog pounds, barber/beauty shops and even movie theaters.

Secrecy was sacrosanct. Signs posted throughout the facilities urged workers to shush. Husbands did not talk to their wives about work. Undercover agents looked out for loose lips. Most of the workers were isolated in their specific tasks; few could conceive of all the elements that went into building the atomic bomb.

But Roger Rohrbacher, 85, of Kennewick, said hints were all over the place. As a chemist and physicist -- jokingly called "peons with Ph.D's" -- he probably had an advantage over others. He noticed restricted supplies like aluminum and steel pouring into Hanford, and the presence of uranium was a dead giveaway.

Dee McCullough, 91, of Richland was fixing radios and movie projectors when he got to Hanford in January 1944. The Utah native was 30, a father of three and told his choice was either the Manhattan Project or the Army.

He became an instrument technician, installing and testing meters that measured neutron flux. He remembers wearing "pencils" -- radiation detectors. Later, he assisted the initial startup of B Reactor with Enrico Fermi, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the leader of one of the Manhattan Project teams whose experiments led to in the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.

"Some people criticize us for making the bomb and killing so many people, but they don't realize how many people we saved," McCullough said. "Armies were ready to go to Japan."

Hanford's role in ending the war remains part of local lore in Richland and the surrounding area, where being "Proud of the Cloud" is a common saying and alums from Richland High School bristle at changing the school's mascot: The Bombers.

Shirley Gilson Schiller (Bomber class of 1947) of Tacoma was 14 when she followed her parents to Hanford. "We were really thrilled and happy to hear the war was over, but it was a terrible way to end it. We felt bad about that, but we rejoiced that more of our own people didn't have to die."

Virginia Miller, 74, of Richland (Bomber '49) still beams with pride when she talks about her father, Harry Miller, a works engineer who arrived in Hanford in 1943.

Miller said the children of those Hanford workers were always aware of their shared heritage.

"I'm very proud of living in history," Miller said. "We were making history."